One of the purposes of photography is to capture a moment in time. For instance, a portrait preserves a person's likeness. A scenic landscape shot encapsulates the environment around you. And an action shot freezes reality for dramatic effect.

This week, we asked you to send in your best action shots for the Mashable Photo Challenge. We wanted to see photos that really encapsulated a sense of motion. While life brings constant motion and movement every day, we don't often think about capturing motion with our photos. If you were to go through your photos on Facebook or Instagram, odds are you will find more photos of still subjects than those in motion.

Mashable readers really stepped up to the challenge of capturing motion, and sent us a colorful range of subjects in motion, like a photo of a sea lion doing a handstand and a snapshot of recent college grads tossing a beer keg.

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